At Home: A short history of private life: Amazon.co.uk: Bill Bryson: 9780385608275: Books By Dr John the Day Tripper VINE VOICE on 1 Jun. 2010 Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase One of the great things about Bill Bryson's books is his ability to grab your attention and draw you in to find out what odd fact he's going to come up with next. So I hadn't even got through the introduction when he came up with the gem about why all churches in Norfolk appear to have sunk into the churchyard (they haven't; it's the churchyard that has risen 3 ft or more because of the number of bodies buried there, which if you do the maths of how many people live in a parish, how many die each year, and how long the churchyards have been there is not so remarkable. And keep on reading to find out just how many bodies were buried in urban cemeteries in the Victorian era - quite astounding).

He is also a great debunker of accepted truths - for instance, there's a lot of interesting comment about the widely accepted view that most food, especially bread, was adulterated with all sorts of disgusting and probably toxic substances. Bryson refers to somebody who tried baking bread with all these supposed adulterants, and showed that what was produced was actually inedible, with the exception of alum, which, he points out, if used in small quantities actually improves bread, and is also used nowadays as an additive to many products. So once again I read this through with great enjoyment and picked up lots of little nuggets of the odd and the interesting. Having said that, however, I did find that I had a sense of deja vu about this book; many of the anecdotes it contains seem to have been recycled from some of his other books (I think that I can recognise quite a lot of them from "Made in America" for example, where they were hung about a framework of American language, rather than around the structure of his wanderings from room to room of his house in Norfolk).

Read more › At Home: A Short History of Private Life Audiobook | Bill Bryson | Audible.com Overall "More Fact Pact Bryson" I am a lifelong fan of Bill Bryson. His travel books are legendary. However since he has ceased travelling he now writes books such as this and many previously, basically packed with interesting facts and historical anecdotes. He uses his house here to take us on a journey to each room, then onward to tell us for instance the story of archaeology or the life of the inventor Alexander Graham Bell or the origin of underwear.. see what I mean random, but it has to be said mostly fun. My only two gripes (and why I did not give it 5 stars) are firstly it is read by the author. He is not a bad reader, but at times tends to drone, I do wish authors would leave reading there books to the people trained to do so. Many of his older books were read by Kerry Shale, and very good they are to. Secondly he does have a tendency to repeat some items from his earlier books, not sure if this intentional or not, but it is a bit annoying, if like me, you have read all his output.

If this is your first foray into Bryson, I should start with an earlier book, but that is not to say this is a bad book by ant means, but he has done much better. 41 of 43 people found this review helpful Amazon Customer Overall "A fascinating journey" Bill Bryson is a great writer and this is a spell-binding book, but I must agree with Stewart that this would have been very much easier on the ear if read by a professional. Mr Bryson's reading is hurried and his diction nasal and it would have put me off completely if the content hadn't been so wonderful. I kept thinking 'if only Stephen Fry were reading this'. On balance, though, the depth of research and Bryson's wit and compassion compensate. 10 of 10 people found this review helpful William Overall "So enjoyable!" I'm only part-way through listening, but I'm absolutely hooked. I must disagree with a previous reviewer in that I find Bryson's narration much better than the reader of A Short History of Nearly Everything; I love his reading here. Like that book though, this will be one I anticipate returning to re-listen to several times. Wonderful!

6 of 6 people found this review helpful A User Overall "An absolute thrill..." I must also disagree with the first review. I found the harsh tones of Mr Shale reading '...Nearly Everything' quite annoying and the production meant I was forced to have the volume up louder than I would usually. Not so with the lovely lilt of Bill Bryson. He bestows such facinating insight into the outwardly mundane subject matter of this book with wit and gentle enthusiasm and it is very difficult to 'put down'. Highly recommended. If you are reading this, you must be thinking of getting it. My advice? You'll love it. 11 of 12 people found this review helpful Mark H Story "Quirky and Entertaining snipets of British History" I enjoy most of Bill Bryson's books and this is one of his best. Bryson is an American anglophile who has managed to distil an archetypal British perspective of life into his prose, whilst retaining an outsiders joy in discovering the stories behind many aspects of Britain (that most British simply take for granted). His eloquent, sometimes quaint, use of understated yet colourful language is a delight.

In this book, he uses the various rooms of his old house as a device to follow historic threads that interest him. Often, he unearths the antecedents of common terms, or items, or features of the landscape or architecture and sets them into their original context, which is something that anyone could do; but where Bryson excels is in giving his own commentary about why they are so interesting to him. He has a gift of making things interesting and in this case it generally reflects very well on Britain and its history. If you want to hear a miscellany of entertainingly recounted snippets of British history told with subjective verve from someone who loves Britain then buy this book. 4 of 4 people found this review helpful Paul Overall "Good but not the best Bryson book" I enjoyed this book, although it isn't the best he's written. Its factual, well referenced and interesting. Its also value for money/credit as it is a decent length. I found the narrator a bit annoying and after huffing and puffing about it for a bit I checked who narrated it only to find out it was Bill Bryson himself!

Although I normally love it when the author narrates their own book, in this case I have heard his books read better. He does tend to slur his words, get a bit tongue tied in parts and doesn't speak as energetically as I'd hoped for. William Roberts who narrated a Short History of Nearly Everything (another Bryson book) would have been an improvement. Definately worth getting if you're a Bryson fan. 6 of 7 people found this review helpful Mr At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson | Book review | Books | The Guardian House and garden At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson While ostensibly writing a history of domesticity, Bill Bryson can't resist a witty anecdote or aracane fact, writes Carole Cadwalladr Bill Bryson delivers his sermon on the home front.

Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the Observer Saturday 5 June 2010 19.05 EDT First published on Saturday 5 June 2010 19.05 EDT Share on Messenger Close In the first chapter of At Home, Bill Bryson surveys his own home, an old Norfolk rectory, and considers the career of the young rector for whom it was built in 1851. Thomas JG Marsham would have enjoyed an income of around £500 – £400,000 today. He was, Bryson writes, one of "a class of well-educated, wealthy people who had immense amounts of time on their hands. In consequence, many of them began, quite spontaneously, to do remarkable things". He cites the examples of George Bayldon, whose services were so poorly attended he converted half his church into a hen-house, and Reverend George Garrett, who pioneered submarine design. They've disappeared now and country vicars are neither rich nor leisured, but Bryson is about as close to a modern equivalent as you can find.

At Home has all the hallmarks of being written by someone with a certain sort of intellectual thirst, a lavish income and too much time on his hands, qualities that in our own age are more likely to be found not in clergymen, but bestselling authors. While Bryson's book purports to be about private life, it's really about whatever takes his fancy. This is Bryson's big book of whims. Home, he claims, is where history ends up. And his method is to lead us on a history of Britain and North America via the rooms in his house. Thus, the chapter on the kitchen is where he discourses on the Duke of Marlborough, who was "said to be so cheap, he refused to dot his 'I's when he wrote, to save on ink". The bedroom is where he brings up an 1878 debate from the British Medical Journal on whether the touch of a menstruating woman could spoil a ham. In the opening chapter, Bryson tells us that what he suddenly realises is that history is "masses of people doing ordinary things.

Even Einstein will have spent large parts of his life thinking about his holidays or new hammock or how dainty was the ankle on the young lady alighting from the tram across the street". This is a charming notion, but it remains just that. We never do find out what Einstein thought about his holidays or about the ankles of the young lady. Instead, we learn, among much else, that lobsters were once so abundant in Britain that servants sought agreements from their employers that they would not be served them more than twice a week. Not that this is a problem in itself. It's just that the book isn't really about home. Or it is, only in the sense that home is where we keep the stuff we don't know what else to do with, boxes that, as Bryson says, "are carefully transferred from house to house with every move in the belief that one day someone might want baby clothes that have been kept for 25 years". Where other people hoard Clarice Cliff pottery or old copies of National Geographic, Bryson hoards facts. He can't resist a well-turned story, a mildly humorous aside, a colourful anecdote. Even his asides have asides.

In one instance, when discoursing on the causes of cholera, he mentions a certain Edwin Chadwick, who believed that smells caused disease, and slips in that he also gave Britain the workhouse. As an aside to the aside, he mentions that Chadwick's half-brother happened to emigrate to America where he's considered the father of baseball. And then, because he can't resist, he gives us a footnote on the aside to the aside, pointing out that their father taught science to John Dalton, who is credited with the discovery of the atom, and then lived with Thomas Paine, whose Rights of Man led to the French Revolution. In the last third of the book, there's a mad dash through the greatest hits of the Industrial Revolution for what seems like completeness's sake. It's as if the headmaster has walked in and schoolmaster Bryson has been forced to take the Beatles off the turntable and relate the facts of the spinning Jenny. A mistake, as he's always better off-topic, relating how Charles Darwin draped himself with electrified zinc chains and doused his body with vinegar, and how John Lubbock, the man who gave the world bank holidays, also spent three months trying to teach his dog to read.

So rather than being a book about home or private life, this is an idiosyncratic sweep through the makings of modernity, and there's a sudden swerve at the end, as Bryson concludes with a mini-critique of the age whose birth he's just described. It's almost, well, a sermon, as if Bryson has realised that he really is Thomas JG Marsham's latterday heir. And it begs the question: what subject will the Reverend Bryson choose to turn to next? To order At Home for £15.99 with free UK p&p, go to observer.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6487 Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: At Home: A Short History of Private Life Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase This book changed my world. Well, at least my perception of my world. At Home is a fascinating account of how we got where we are today, domestically speaking.

I read it whist living in a non-western, non-English speaking country and it illuminated for me the historical reasons behind some of the assumptions I make which are at odds with the society I'm currently living in, like why I think my dining room should be bigger than the one in my rented house is. Sure, knowing dates of major battles is important, but this book is history as it was meant to be: relevant, enlightening, and funny. 0Comment | 63 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse Comment Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase I found this book to be truly disappointing and not as advertised. The writing style is sloppy and conversational and there is little discussion of life. Instead it is a discussion of inventions that may have had an impact on life-such as the telephone. However, Bryson's discussions of the inventions are superficial and show no original research. For example, when Bryson discusses Mount Vernon and Monticello he repeatedly mentions the guide from whom he got the information and, in fact, the contents of the chapter could just as easily be gleaned from the websites for the locations.

Another annoying aspect of the book is that when there is not an answer to a question, Bryson simply answers with "and we will never know" or something of that kind. It would have been more impressive if he made a scintilla of effort to investigate the unknown. There are also few diagrams of items Bryson describes such a agricultural implements or cutlery. Overall, I cannot recommend this book because it is poorly written, superficially researched, and never discusses in any depth the subject it proposes. Instead it is a slapdash work of inventions and their almost exclusively male inventors. (imagine a book on private life with no mention of women or children at play) 0Comment | 9 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse Comment Format: Paperback | Verified Purchase My expectations were that Mr. Bryson's book would cover different household items and traditions, but I was clearly mistaken. Each room that he investigates in his home is more a launching pad to cover topics that only remotely apply to the rooms. Darwin's theory of evolution, penile pricking rings, Otzi the Iceman, and rodents' qualities are but a few examples of odd tangents.

Mercy, the man is all over the place in this thing but no matter. The information was still interesting. There are nineteen chapters covering from the building of his home in 1851 to the kitchen, the study, the dining room, the stairs, the cellar, the garden, the bedroom, the garden, and so on and so on until the author finishes up in the attic. Mr. Bryson's playful curiosity about the world around him is infectious. Some topics, such as the bathroom and the difficulties of waste management prior to water treatment facilities made me queasy. I'll never complain about cleaning our toilets ever again. That's for sure. Ultimately, the book is chock full of many home qualities that we never or rarely wonder how they came into being. He also focuses a great deal of time on the oodles of lunatic Victorian mores that make me darned happy to be living in our more enlightened age. Heck, the whole book makes me happy that we have electricity, indoor plumbing, advanced medicine, mattresses, bathing and less draconian social services for the destitute. 'At Home' is not as entertaining as Mr. Bryson's 'A Walk in the Woods' but more informative.

It is light reading, full of fun facts and an occasional dry sarcastic remark which always made me chuckle. If you're interested in something other than a murder mystery, science fiction, romance or whatnot then the author's easy-to-read book is a nice way to kill a few hours. 0Comment | 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse Comment Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase I've been a Bill Bryson fan since I picked up a book I thought was a spinoff Travels With Charley and laughed my head off as Bryson circumnavigated some (truly) mostly unlaughable places. I own all his books, and reread them frequently; as an illustrator, I've dreamed of doing a cover for him. But this book not only has very little humour, it is a yawner of a history lesson -- one that leaves a lot of the good stuff out. I guess a guy's entitled to a scrubber once in a while (the book about his childhood was the one I would have nominated), but for the first time, I felt ripped off by Bryson, and almost personally hurt.

I wonder if there's any chance Katz is coming back any time soon................. pat chapin [...] Format: Paperback | Verified Purchase Bill Bryson, author of such excellent books as Walk in the Woods and A Short History of Nearly Everything, returns with At Home: A Short History of Private Life. Based on the earlier books, I'm a bit disappointed in this book. His prose is still good. The subject is fascinating. But never have I seen a book in so desperate need of an editor. The tangents stray too far from the main theme, dominating more and more space resulting in such dilution of the theme that it's hard to remember what parts of the home were covered and what parts were not. I don't even remember what part of the Victorian home led to a detailed review of the autopsy conducted on Otzi, the Ice man found in the Italian Alps. The book also seems to end right in the middle of a section. Bryson divides the book into chapters for each room of the house. Starting from an old house he owned, in England.

He produces some great trivia such as how medieval tables led to terms such as chairman of the board, but soon the tangents take us away into interesting and entertaining information, but unlike James Burke's Circles, Bryson doesn't really bring us back to where we started. It's disappointing because there are so many things about the home that I hoped to learn, but there wasn't room for them because of the space and time taken up by things like Otzi. 0Comment | 2 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse Comment Format: Paperback | Verified Purchase "As well as a generous array of more or less conventional knives, forks, and spoons, the diner needed also to know how to recognize and manipulate specialized cheese scoops, olive spoons, terrapin forks, oyster prongs, chocolate muddlers, gelatin knives, tomato servers, and tongs of every size and degree of springiness. At one point, a single manufacturer offered no fewer than 146 different types of flatware for the table." - Bill Bryson on the extremes of nineteenth century eating utensils in AT HOME "When word got out that the withered and miserly Marquis of Queensberry ...

was also in the habit of taking milk baths, milk sales in the district plummeted because it was rumored that he returned the milk for resale after he had immersed his crusty and decrepit skin in it." - Bill Bryson in AT HOME In his previous A Short History of Nearly Everything , Bill Bryson - an American national treasure, albeit an expat one - told us nearly everything we might want to know about the history of the world, the Solar System, and the Universe. It's a superlative work of popular science both for the information it provides and the humor in the telling. In AT HOME, Bryson focuses on those things that have influence on one's personal life as a human as it has evolved over the past century and a half. Somewhat narrowly, to be sure, he generally approaches this gargantuan task from the perspective of England and America, and mostly the former. As might be suspected on a topic so vast and comprising so many disparate elements, Bill obviously needed some way to frame the discussion.

Brilliantly, I think, he arranges his subtopics according to the various spaces of a house - in particular, those of his 19th century abode of the moment in an unidentified village in the county of Norfolk, England, a former Church of England property called the Old Rectory: Hall, Kitchen, Scullery and Larder, Fuse Box, Drawing Room, Dining Room, Cellar, Passage, Study, Garden, Plum Room, Stairs, Bedroom, Bathroom, Dressing Room, Nursery, and Attic. As the author proceeds through each space, the topics summoned to his narrative seem the result of free-association. Indeed, sometimes almost too free for the connection to be made, e.g. a discussion in the chapter entitled "The Study" of the massive swarm of locusts that descended on the American and Canadian midwestern states and provinces in 1873. That seemed somewhat of a stretch, but it's Bill's book and he must've had a good reason. However, the associations usually make perfect sense, e.g.

the evolution of women's hairstyles and men's wigs and the fashions of both sexes in "The Dressing Room", the construction of London's sewer system in "The Bathroom", the perfection of household electricity in "The Fuse Box", and the availability and consumption of various foodstuffs "The Kitchen." It's all fascinating stuff, which makes this and any other of Bryson's books so immensely enjoyable. I never cease to be amazed at the extent of the knowledge, albeit perhaps superficial, which Bill absorbs and subsequently shares with his readers. It obviously comes from a prodigious survey of existing publications. In the case of AT HOME, the bibliography extends to twenty-six pages, and just looking through it could probably provide multiple entries for my own Wish List if I didn't already have too many books on my pending shelf. AT HOME isn't all-inclusive. The most glaring admission is that of personal transportation whether it be by carriage or automobile. The Old Rectory must've had a space where the rector parked his one-horse carriage, or at least his riding horse, on which he made his parish rounds. You would think. There was no mention either of a swimming pool or hot tub. Ok, I'm being silly.

AT HOME illustrates again one of the guiding principles of my personal life, which is that I'll devour anything that Bryson writes. Anyone who has yet to discover this phenomenally gifted writer and humorist is leading a deprived existence. 0Comment | One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse Comment Actually, one of the other Amazon reviewers (William Standring) said it best: "At Home is the sort of book Cliff Claven would have written had he had the chance." Mr. Standring, I couldn't agree more. I have loved all of Bryson's books and was looking forward to this one when it was selected my Book Club. I was bored from the first chapter. I really don't care how many planks or panes of glass were used for an exposition building that no longer exists. Granular details about a vicar's cottage just aren't that funny. C'mon Bryson, have you decided to relax in your carpet slippers and simply observe every nail in the floorboard and then tie it to an uninteresting historic event? Bryson fans (like me) will be very disappointed.

If you fancy a long, dull monologue of useless trivia about Victorian era Britain, you might just like it. 0Comment | 12 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse Comment Format: Hardcover | Verified Purchase Good grief. 'Slugging through...' was the word used by both me and my friend as we described this laborious diatribe from good ol' Bill. This thing is (as always) well researched, but somewhat like reading an encyclopedia Britannica article - without the humor of said Britannica humor. This thing was awful. It's not strung together well and the 'rooms' have little, if anything, to do with the topics. He's resting on his laurels and it's time to give him a gentle shove. While I've loved 'A Brief History' and everything else I've ever read from him, it's time for Mr. Bryson to get back to what he does best: venture forth and tell us about the world. I wonder what he would think about the Antarctic... The only reason I finished this was because Bill Bryson wrote it. Otherwise I would have left it at the 25% mark without a single regret.

Format: Hardcover | Verified Purchase Ok, Bryson can write, but this book is a loose collection of anecdotes strung together under chapter titles that have little to do with their content. Bryson uses the various rooms of the house as an excuse to ramble on about food, bricks, bad architects, oddball inventors, the Eiffel Tower (in which no one lives) and how much the parties of the rich cost. And, yes, Mr. Bryson does make some mistakes: every source I can find says that eggplant originated in Asia, not in the Americas as he claims. He can turn a phrase, and he does a good job of insulting the British aristocracy. But ideas (even good ones) are picked up and put down with little concern for their continuity. So, if you are looking to explore Bryson's odd psyche, this can be an entertaining text. You might even learn something from it. NOT Bryson's best work. 0Comment | 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse Comment Format: Hardcover | Verified Purchase The focus of this book is at home. It is well structured by focusing on each room within a house.

Unfortunately this structure, while followed, is nothing more than a launching pad to discuss may far remove and bearly related topics within the context of each room. Perhaps only a quarter of the book is devoted to each room and its what, why and evolution. If you like excursions to unknown places, this is a book for you. If, however, you are looking for focus, you will find this book tiring and frustrating. 0Comment | 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse Comment Bill Bryson Bill Bryson The Road to Little Dribbling ‘Everybody loves Bill Bryson, don’t they?

He’s clever, witty, entertaining, a great companion…his research is on show here, producing insight, wisdom and startling nuggets of information…Bill Bryson and his new book are the dog’s bollocks.’ - Independent on Sunday Bill Bryson ‘Funny, wise, learned and compulsive’ - GQ Bill Bryson turns away from travelling the highways and byways of middle America, so hilariously depicted in his bestselling The Lost Continent, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid and Notes from a Big Country, for a fast, exhilarating ride along the Route 66 of American language and popular culture. In Made in America, Bryson tells the story of how American arose out of the English language, and along the way, de-mythologizes his native land - explaining how a dusty desert hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn’t won, why Americans say ‘lootenant’ and ‘Toosday’, how they were eating junk food long before the word itself was cooked up - as well as exposing the true origins of the words G-string, blockbuster, poker and snafu.

‘A tremendously sassy work, full of zip, pizzazz and all those other great American qualities’ Will Self, Independent on Sunday Bill Bryson This celebration of the English countryside does not only focus on the rolling green landscapes and magnificent monuments that set England apart from the rest of the world. Many of the contributors bring their own special touch, presenting a refreshingly eclectic variety of personal icons, from pub signs to seaside piers, from cattle grids to canal boats, and from village cricket to nimbies. First published as a lavish colour coffeetable book, this new expanded paperback edition has double the original number of contributions from many celebrities including Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Eric Clapton, Bryan Ferry, Sebastian Faulks, Kate Adie, Kevin Spacey, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, Richard Mabey , Simon Jenkins, John Sergeant, Benjamin Zephaniah, Joan Bakewell, Antony Beevor, Libby Purves, Jonathan Dimbleby, and many more: and a new preface by HRH Prince Charles. Bill Bryson Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely at home he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. The ultimate eye-opening journey through time and space, A Short History of Nearly Everything is the biggest-selling popular science book of the 21st century, and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before. Bill Bryson Bill Bryson goes to Kenya at the invitation of CARE International, the charity dedicated to working with local communities to eradicate poverty around the world. Kenya, generally regarded as the cradle of humankind, is a land of stunning landscapes, famous game reserves, and a vibrant culture, but it also has many serious problems, including refugees, AIDS, drought and grinding poverty. It also provides plenty to worry a nervous traveller like Bill Bryson: hair-raising rides in light aircraft, tropical diseases, snakes, insects and large predators.

Bryson casts his inimitable eye on a continent new to him, and the resultant diary, though short in length, contains all his trademark laugh-out-loud wit, wry observation and curious insight. All the author’s royalties from this book, as well as all profits, will go to CARE International. WINNER: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER READER AWARD FOR BEST TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 WINNER: BOOKS ARE MY BAG READER AWARD FOR BEST AUTOBIOGRAPHY OR BIOGRAPHY 2016 Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his adopted country. The hilarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Island, was taken to the nation’s heart and became the bestselling travel book ever, and was also voted in a BBC poll the book that best represents Britain.Now, to mark the twentieth anniversary of that modern classic, Bryson makes a brand-new journey round Britain to see what has changed.

Following (but not too closely) a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, by way of places that many people never get to at all, Bryson sets out to rediscover the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly unique country that he thought he knew but doesn’t altogether recognize any more. Yet, despite Britain’s occasional failings and more or less eternal bewilderments, Bill Bryson is still pleased to call our rainy island home. And not just because of the cream teas, a noble history, and an extra day off at Christmas. Once again, with his matchless homing instinct for the funniest and quirkiest, his unerring eye for the idiotic, the endearing, the ridiculous and the scandalous, Bryson gives us an acute and perceptive insight into all that is best and worst about Britain today. Bill Bryson Bill Bryson has the rare knack of being out of his depth wherever he goes - even (perhaps especially) in the land of his birth. This became all too apparent when, after nearly two decades in England, the world's best-loved travel writer upped sticks with Mrs Bryson, little Jimmy et al.

and returned to live in the country he had left as a youth. Of course there were things Bryson missed about Blighty but any sense of loss was countered by the joy of rediscovering some of the forgotten treasures of his childhood: the glories of a New England autumn; the pleasingly comical sight of oneself in shorts; and motel rooms where you can generally count on being awakened in the night by a piercing shriek and the sound of a female voice pleading, 'Put the gun down, Vinnie, I'll do anything you say.' Whether discussing the strange appeal of breakfast pizza or the jaw-slackening direness of American TV, Bill Bryson brings his inimitable brand of bemused wit to bear on that strangest of phenomena - the American way of life. Bill Bryson In At Home, Bill Bryson applies the same irrepressible curiosity, irresistible wit, stylish prose and masterful storytelling that made A Short History of Nearly Everything one of the most lauded books of the last decade, and delivers one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live.

Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote a lot more time to studying the battles and wars of history than to considering what history really consists of: centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - eating, sleeping and merely endeavouring to get more comfortable. And that most of the key discoveries for humankind can be found in the very fabric of the houses in which we live.This inspired him to start a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, wandering from room to room considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. Along the way he did a prodigious amount of research on the history of anything and everything, from architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the spice trade to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets; and on the brilliant, creative and often eccentric minds behind them. And he discovered that, although there may seem to be nothing as unremarkable as our domestic lives, there is a huge amount of history, interest and excitement - and even a little danger - lurking in the corners of every home.

Bill Bryson It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still Australia teems with life – a large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else. Ignoring such dangers – and yet curiously obsessed by them – Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia and promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging: their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn’t get much better than this… Bill Bryson ‘I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to’ And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn’t hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set.

Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres. He discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own land. Bryson’s acclaimed first success, The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature – hilariously, stomach-achingly, funny, yet tinged with heartache – and the book that first staked Bill Bryson’s claim as the most beloved writer of his generation. Bill Bryson Bill Bryson’s first travel book, The Lost Continent, was unanimously acclaimed as one of the funniest books in years. In Neither Here nor There he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student twenty years before.

Whether braving the homicidal motorists of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant or window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein. Bill Bryson In the company of his friend Stephen Katz (last seen in the bestselling Neither Here nor There), Bill Bryson set off to hike the Appalachian Trail, the longest continuous footpath in the world. Ahead lay almost 2,200 miles of remote mountain wilderness filled with bears, moose, bobcats, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants, disease-bearing tics, the occasional chuckling murderer and - perhaps most alarming of all - people whose favourite pastime is discussing the relative merits of the external-frame backpack. Facing savage weather, merciless insects, unreliable maps and a fickle companion whose profoundest wish was to go to a motel and watch The X-Files, Bryson gamely struggled through the wilderness to achieve a lifetime's ambition - not to die outdoors.

Bill Bryson In summer 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest), a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and an unknown aviator named Charles Lindbergh who became the most famous man on earth. It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone’s reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of over-the-hill baseball player Babe Ruth, and an almost impossible amount more. In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a tale of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy. With the trademark brio, wit and authority that make him Britain’s favourite writer of narrative non-fiction, he brings to life a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and changed the world. Bill Bryson What does history really consist of? Centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - sleeping, eating, having sex, endeavouring to get comfortable. And where did all these normal activities take place? At home.

This was the thought that inspired Bill Bryson to start a journey around the rooms of his own house, an 1851 Norfolk rectory, to consider how the ordinary things in life came to be. And what he discovered are surprising connections to anything from the Crystal Palace to the Eiffel Tower, from scurvy to body-snatching, from bedbugs to the Industrial Revolution, and just about everything else that has ever happened, resulting in one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live, enhanced in this new edition by hundreds of stunning photographs and illustrations. Bill Bryson Bill's own fascination with science began with a battered old schoolbook he had when he was about ten or eleven years old in America. It had an illustration that captivated him - a cutaway diagram showing Earth's interior as it would look if you cut into it with a large knife and carefully removed about a quarter of its bulk. And he very clearly remembers thinking: "How do they know that?" Bill's story-telling skill makes the "How?" and, just as importantly, the "Who?" of scientific discovery entertaining and accessible for all ages.

In this exciting edition for younger readers, he covers the wonder and mysteries of time and space, the frequently bizarre and often obsessive scientists and the methods they used, the crackpot theories which held sway for far too long, the extraordinary accidental discoveries which suddenly advanced whole areas of science when the people were actually looking for something else (or in the wrong direction) and the mind-boggling fact that, somehow, the universe exists and, against all odds, life came to be on this wondrous planet we call home. Bill Bryson 'More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to...' Only Bill Bryson could make a book about the English language so entertaining. With his boundless enthusiasm and restless eye for the absurd, this is his astonishing tour of English. From its mongrel origins to its status as the world's most-spoken tongue; its apparent simplicity to its deceptive complexity; its vibrant swearing to its uncertain spelling and pronunciation, Bryson covers all this as well as the many curious eccentricities that make it as maddening to learn as it is flexible to use.

Bill Bryson's classic Mother Tongue is a highly readable and hilarious tale of how English came to be the world's language. Bill Bryson What is the difference between cant and jargon, or assume and presume? What is a fandango? How do you spell supersede? Is it hippy or hippie? These questions really matter to Bill Bryson, as they do to anyone who cares about the English language. Originally published as The Penguin Dictionary for Writers and Editors, Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors has now been completely revised and updated for the twenty-first century by Bill Bryson himself. Here is a very personal selection of spellings and usages, covering such head-scratchers as capitalization, plurals, abbreviations and foreign names and phrases. Bryson also gives us the difference between British and American usages, and miscellaneous pieces of essential information you never knew you needed, like the names of all the Oxford colleges, or the correct spelling of Brobdingnag. An indispensable companion to all those who write, work with the written word, or who just enjoy getting things right, it gives rulings that are both authoritative and commonsense, all in Bryson's own inimitably goodhumoured way.

Bill Bryson What is the difference between mean and median, blatant and flagrant, flout and flaunt? Is it whodunnit or whodunit? Do you know? Are you sure? With Troublesome Words, journalist and bestselling travel-writer Bill Bryson gives us a clear, concise and entertaining guide to the problems of English usage and spelling that has been an indispensable companion to those who work with the written word for over twenty years. So if you want to discover whether you should care about split infinitives, are cursed with an uncontrollable outbreak of commas or were wondering if that newsreader was right to say 'an historic day', this superb book is the place to find out.

Question: Whose recent book is called 'At Home: A Short History of Private Life'?
Answer: BILL BRYSON